


coyote chorus

by larkscape



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) Lives, Future Fic, Home, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Place Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 19:18:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17987081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkscape/pseuds/larkscape
Summary: This house — though Keith’s hesitant to call it that; he knows what the place looks like — is one of the oldest things in his memory.





	coyote chorus

 

This house — though Keith’s hesitant to call it that; he knows what the place looks like — is one of the oldest things in his memory.

In the early days, it was a good place full of good things. It was sunlight; it was swords made of sticks in the front yard; it was riding on the back of his dad’s hoverbike in that too-brief time between when he was large enough to hang on and the day when his dad scrambled eggs in the morning and never came back home to wash the pan.

After that day, it was a wound.

Keith didn’t see the place for a few years. It was technically his; dad had owned the land outright and it would pass to Keith once he was of age. But wards of the state didn’t do their own property inspections, and Keith was busy being shuffled through the system, anyway, so the house sat empty, hunkered down and sinking into the desert dust. When Keith was finally placed in the group home the next town over, he’d snuck out to come visit a few times, but the memories didn’t line up anymore.

Now, Shiro appears next to him on the porch and proffers a beer, which Keith accepts with a nod.

“You look lost in thought,” Shiro says. An opening, if Keith wants to take it.

“Just remembering. Been a while since we’ve been back here. I didn’t think those curtains could _get_ any rattier, but…”

Shiro laughs and leans on the porch railing next to him, careful of the soft spot in the wood. “It’s nice to be somewhere familiar every now and then,” he says, a smile quirking his lips. Keith forgets, sometimes, for brief moments, just how handsome Shiro is, but then he does something like that to remind him. “Don’t tell Iverson — he’d never let me live it down — but sometimes I get homesick for Earth deserts. There’s nowhere else that smells quite right.”

Keith smiles. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

They sip their beers (cheap, imported IPA for Keith, some local Olkari-run microbrewery’s berry ale for Shiro — their knack for wedding tech with nature extends to barley and hops, which has led to a thriving Olkari presence in Earth’s craft beer scene) and look out over a desert stained gold and purple by the last dregs of sunset.

Coming back here after the Kerberos mission failure had felt like being a ghost, haunting his own life. Keith remembers the urgent pull he felt from Blue, but he also remembers waking in the night to the shrill songs of coyotes and, still dream-drunk, expecting to hear his father singing back to them. It had been years since the last time, but he hadn’t heard the coyotes so close since _before,_ and a fist closed on his windpipe when he realized that he’d never hear his dad’s coyote calls again. And realized it again, night after night. Being back in this house had opened wounds, and the sheets he’d tossed over the sagging, threadbare couch to sleep on were insufficient to bandage them.

It’d improved, slowly, as he built his map and traced the blue lion’s pull. Just the fact of moving through the house freshened it somewhat, layered new memories over the painful old, and eventually he started singing to the coyotes himself at night instead of waiting for a phantom to do it.

Still, the couch never looked better than when Shiro slept on it that first night after Keith stole him from the Garrison.

These days, when Keith is here, the house has Shiro in it, too. That makes a big difference.

“We’ve got a couple weeks before Allura wants to head out for Ceryon,” Shiro says, and tips back the last of his beer. “What do you say we head into town tomorrow? Get some groceries, maybe find some new curtains before these ones disintegrate entirely.”

“Good idea,” Keith says, then props his elbows on the railing and leans his forehead against his beer bottle.

The rest of the paladins are visiting their families in the down time. The Ceryon mission promises to be a long one; the system is right at the border of an old neutral zone the Coalition is still trying to stabilize, and Minister Lobrich reached out to both Princess Allura and the Blade of Marmora for aid in dismantling several Zyforge cannon factories. Apparently, there are also some holdouts from the Flames of Purification causing trouble in that sector. Kolivan and Krolia plan to take the opportunity to root them out.

There’s always more work to be done, even in peacetime. Keith wouldn’t have it any other way.

Still, the desert house waits for him here on Earth. It’s… it’s good. Settled, in a way Keith had never in his life expected to feel. He hasn’t thought of the house as _home_ since his dad still lived there; no, Keith’s home is up among the stars. But these old walls are familiar and patient. While Keith and Shiro and everyone else are off flying across the universe, life here goes on: dust settles in and blows away, spiders build neighborhoods in the corners and then depart, the coyotes wander the desert just out of sight, and through it all the house remains, hunkered down, waiting. The porch is slowly rotting out, the curtains keep getting worse and new ones won’t fare any better against the desert sun, but underneath, the place has good bones.

Keith wonders if this is what it feels like to have a vacation home, and then has to laugh at himself. No one in their right mind would vacation all the way out here.

Except him and Shiro, apparently.

He knocks his shoulder into Shiro’s. “Think we should rent this place out while we’re gone?”

Shiro smiles and nudges back. “I don’t think the coyotes could afford it.”

“I’ll accept payment in rabbits.”

Shiro laughs, looping one arm around Keith’s shoulders, and Keith slings his own arm around Shiro’s waist as they stand on the porch in the gathering dark to wait for the first howls.

No, it’s not fencing with stick swords in the front yard, but Keith isn’t three anymore, either. Shiro always washes the egg pan as soon as he’s done with it, and when they leave this place, they both go. And when they return, they both return.

 


End file.
